Mia Jacobs is a recipe developer, creator and facilitator who studied Drama and Theatre Arts at the University of Birmingham, graduating in 2017. After graduating they worked in hospitality and sales before founding their online cooking school Always Cook on the Bright Side, where they taught hundreds of people how to cook vegan food from the comfort of their own homes. Mia now runs Twisted Green, a vegan brand with over 250k followers, continuing their mission to facilitate sustainable relationships with plant-based cooking. In 2025 they co-founded All Our Kitchens, a digital anthology of recipes and stories from chefs and creators (including TV chef Andi Oliver) in the UK and Palestine which, to date, has raised over £10k for charities on the ground in Gaza.
In our March edition of the Birmingham Graduate, where we are celebrating all things to be proud of, Mia shares on how their journey to becoming a chef and what they have learnt and accomplished since continues to be such a source of pride!
Let’s start with a bit of a big question, what are you most proud of in your career and why?
It was nice to have this opportunity to reflect and look back on what my career has been since graduation as I certainly don’t do it enough! I truly do think that what I am most proud of is the journey of my career and how it has taught me so much about my values. I can pinpoint moments where I thought, ‘wow I never thought I would do something like this,’ and looking at where I started to where I am now.
My proudest moment in the beginning was when I started my cooking classes – it was a goal of mine to end up in food somehow but I always felt shut off from that world because I didn’t have professional training or the funds to explore this career and so I needed to find a way to break into this world of food.
Having worked in Sales before this, I created this limiting belief that I thought I could only work in sales as that was all I had ever done. Then when lockdown hit, I was furloughed and eventually made redundant, and the opportunity arose to move out of London and back to Birmingham and start my own cooking business.
I was essentially teaching people to cook from the comfort of their own homes over Zoom and at a time when people were really looking for moments of connection. This then grew from community and public classes to corporate classes for example with the likes of Disney, a brand that I never thought I would get the chance to work with. The fact that this was driven from an idea that I had, to take that into the world and create something so real with it is incredibly special – carving something for myself and watching it grow and seeing people interact with it was such a huge achievement for me.
More recently, my partner and I created a cookbook called ‘All Our Kitchens’ to raise money for two charities working on the ground in Gaza. This was born out of a sense of hopelessness with very little conversation in the industry around food scarcity in Gaza. It felt like I had the resource and network at the time to act and bring people together, who were equally passionate about building and creating this tangible product where we could make a difference and show solidarity. Being able to blend my world of food into a passion project encompassing values that I have and many others share was an incredible thing and so that is a big source of pride for me this year.
Your career and how you have paved the path sounds incredibly values driven and so in a world where sometimes our career choices may have to be driven by stability and logic rather than passion and risk, what advice do you have about taking that leap?
Firstly, I must acknowledge that I recognise that I am in an extremely privileged position to have a network of hugely supportive family and friends who I could fall back on if things didn’t work out so that does provide a level of stability. I will say that I have always felt like I needed to be in a job where I could see the positive impact of what I was doing. The through line with my career is around people and my values – work is such a huge part of our lives, and I want to be in a space where I feel I am consistently learning and growing.
I remember coming out of University and I truly didn’t know what jobs existed. I said to my mum, ‘I want to work with people’, Googled it and the typical answer of HR came up but had no idea what that entailed. It was how I ended up in sales as I thought, I can talk to people, this will work out! Though, when I think about all the work I have done since then, especially with the initial cookery classes, it was about connection, meeting people and facilitating good relationships with cooking. What has been so nice for me is seeing that there really are a plethora of avenues and creating a job for yourself is special and exciting to see how it can grow.
Through the cookbook and the people we have worked with on that, I ended up connecting with an incredible young woman in Gaza studying English Literature and we shared so much about each other’s lives and it was so beautiful that through the work I am doing, I am learning so much not only about how to create the work but also the impact it has on other people. Also vice versa, learning from them and using that to influence what I do next and so yes, I think the values behind what I do is so important. I didn’t think I would learn this much about myself through my career but that is what makes it even more rewarding.
With your career so far, at the start how did you keep going and recognising pride in what you were doing even when it felt scary and how did you keep showing up?
Coming out of university, self-doubt was something that had always been a big part of how I approached things and especially graduating with a Drama degree (which I loved doing) but not a technical food led degree, the imposter syndrome very much appeared at the beginning of my career as a chef. Whenever I approached a class in the early days, imposter syndrome was always there – I didn’t understand how people trusted me to tell them how to cook! I have always found though that the best way to learn is simply by doing. I look back at the videos I created back then the dishes and menus I put together, and I am slightly mortified and cannot stress enough, I did not know what I was doing! However now I look back and see how much I improved. I am glad I had the audacity to give it a go!
The thing that kept me going was the fact that people kept coming back to my classes. It was clear there was something here that people enjoyed and when I saw the evidence of the work being successful, even though it surprised me, I realised it was growing. Additionally, when I got recruited for the role of Brand Lead at Twisted Greens, that was another big hit of self-doubt. I only had about 1000 followers at the time and I was given the role of managing a social page with a huge following. I had to remind myself of the small steps and progress that I had made from the cooking classes up until then and reminding myself that someone saw potential in me. I had to keep saying yes and then just try my best in all of these situations and especially in a creative role, I am so passionate about this and that also kept me wanting to grow and keep trying things to get better.
During your time at University of Birmingham, were there any influences that inspired you to make those steps that you are so proud of now?
It was the extra-curricular activities – I was involved in Drama societies from my first year on campus and I recognised this was where I would see a lot of personal growth. I think the work that my peers were making in those spaces had a huge impact on me, it was so cool to see people creating things off their own back. Doing drama showed me that you must have real conviction in what you’re creating, you are selling that to the audience, and it taught me that weaving yourself into it and building into that will land with someone.
When I first directed a show at University, a lot of people came up to me afterwards to compliment me on my approach as I did it a little differently and really put my stamp on it. I remember thinking how cool it was that people thought that and it translated to them how I loved the process as much as I did the destination.
That has come through into my line of my work now. I remember at the beginning of becoming a chef, I was creating very niche content, and I knew it would find the people it needed to, and I knew that if I kept being myself, at some point people will resonate with it. Especially in the world of content creation, you must be authentically you or your audience will see right through it. As I mentioned earlier with my career journey, when something is values driven, it is so easy to come back to ‘your why’.
Finally, what advice do you have to recent graduates who want to take a leap of faith and do things differently? Follow a passion, change careers, explore a hobby to turn it into a passion project etc.
My main piece of advice is to talk to people about what you’re doing even if you have the self-doubt or don’t have a fully formed idea yet. You never know what connections can come out of a single conversation and where that could take you. For example, even my dad once talked to his barber about what I was doing, and he had a friend of a friend he recommended I talk to! I learnt that people do want to help, to facilitate connections, to help build something especially when you are so passionate about it. It shows that you are speaking your passion into existence and your belief behind finding opportunities.
My second piece of advice is don’t be afraid to ask – if you don’t ask, you don’t get! I remember, I had a contact who knew someone who had been on MasterChef and I cheekily asked if they could share my details. I ended up having a coffee with this person and it was so brilliant to pick their brain and be connected to people in the industry.
Third, if you don’t feel qualified, do it anyway! I think for people who are socialised as women, it is so common to feel like you must hold back. There has been exponential growth from when I started, and I am so glad that I kept going with it and continued to put myself in new situations. You are never going to be good at something when you first start and if you let that put you off, you won’t be able to grow with it.
Finally, don’t be afraid of a side hustle! I have friends who are exploring side hustles that have no relevance to their jobs but have so many incredible ideas such as supper clubs or video editing that fulfil them in a different way. It doesn’t have to start with a bang; you can start planting the seeds whilst doing the job that provides the stability that you might need currently. We all need a creative outlet, and you might find something that opens some new pathways that you hadn’t considered before.